Experts are full of valuable knowledge and are ready to help with any question. Credentials confirmed by a Fortune 500 verification firm.

Get a Professional Answer

Via email, text message, or notification as you wait on our site. Ask follow up questions if you need to.

100% Satisfaction Guarantee

Rate the answer you receive.

Ask JGM Your Own Question

JGM, Solicitor

Category: Employment Law

Satisfied Customers: 11544

Experience: 30 years experience as a solicitor.

31090051

Type Your Employment Law Question Here...

JGM is online now

I currently work 'with' as opposed to 'for' a company, as an

Resolved Question:

I currently work 'with' as opposed to 'for' a company, as an independent sales agent, (on a 10% commission of nett profit of my sales). Their Financial Director tracked me down to work with them in May 2015 after I left their employment in May 2013 unable to work by their regime.Sadly, although the Financial Director and MD told me 'things have changed' referring to their working practices, they have not and they are making it impossible for me to increase sales in my area and make a decent living by taking new customer's that I have brought on board and giving them to their internal sales staff.The reason I know this is because I identified orders on their order book of companies that are new and who I had contacted by telephone and email, which I provided the company with as proof of contact.My requests to have these transferred to me since seeing them on the order book, has been ignored. I should stipulate that one of the main reasons that the Financial Director stated to me that he wanted me back is because I am the only sales person to make 'cold' sales calls.Since this time, the company's sales have increased and they have had record months. I have emailed the company's order book for the period of Jan 2015 to present to my personal email address so I can check and cross-reference and I have identified further companies that have now started to place orders and I have listed all of these companies to the Financial Director to change them to my area, providing them with a copy of my telephone bill detailing the call and forwarding my email to the said companies and I have still been ignored, I have requested the accounts to be transferred about 4 times and I am still being ignored and I have proof of these requests via the company email. All my emails are read by the MD and an internal sales member, who ironically is being passed these accounts.In addition, I attended a meeting that I set up with a new lead that I generated, the senior buyer of Screwfix to sell them the products this company represents as a distributor. When Screwfix forwarded their supplier vendor form to be completed, the MD told me it was too long and he couldn't be arsed to complete it and since then no further contact, to my knowledge, has been made to Screwfix. If I had been successful in securing this account Screwfix advised that the orders would have to be in excess of 0.5 million pounds per annum to deal with them.My question is this, as an independent sales agent without a contract with this company, if I cease association with this company and I work with a competitor on an agency basis and I have the knowledge that I have of this customer order book which I emailed to myself do I risk legal action?BACKGROUND:The industry sector is electronic distribution, the company's circa annual turnover is in excess of £13 million.The reason I left in 2013 is because they did the same thing and kept the leads internally even though I was as an employee. In addition, my employment terms changed from working as a field representative to travel a once a week and stay two days in the office, making a 3.5 hour one-way journey to make sales calls which I could have done from home.

Submitted: 1 year ago.

Category: Employment Law

Share this conversation

Customer:replied 1 year ago.

(Posted by JustAnswer at customer's request) Hello. I would like to request the following Expert Service(s) from you: Live Phone Call. Let me know if you need more information, or send me the service offer(s) so we can proceed.

if there is no written contract preventing you from taking customers and dealing with them on an agency basis for competitors. Restrictive covenant type agreements which would stop you from doing so must be in writing. if there is nothing in writing then you are free to compete, provided that you have not stolen the information and would be expected to have it in the normal course of trade. Happy to discuss further. i hope that helps. Please leave a positive rating so that I am credited for my time.

We have free access to all of this information on the remotely connected business PC in our home. What we want to know is as we transferred that information to another laptop so we can work on it. Is that classed under business law as stolen?

Customer:replied 1 year ago.

... And yes, we would be expected to have it in the normal course or trade. What we want to know if the data is transferred from one PC to another so I can continue working and my wife can cross-reference on the new orders placed against the emails I have made to customers as new customers are not easily traceable and take a lot of scanning thru to identify from the date they place their first order or made contact to the date I contacted them.

if the company has taken no steps to protect their own intellectual property, and you happen to have it then there is nothing to stop you using it in the course of your business. it isn't stolen as you had it to start with.

Ask a Solicitor

Get a Professional Answer. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed.

Solicitors are Online Now

Type Your Employment Law Question Here...

characters left:

Disclaimer: Information in questions, answers, and other posts on this site ("Posts") comes from individual users, not JustAnswer; JustAnswer is not responsible for Posts. Posts are for general information, are not intended to substitute for informed professional advice (medical, legal, veterinary, financial, etc.), or to establish a professional-client relationship. The site and services are provided "as is" with no warranty or representations by JustAnswer regarding the qualifications of Experts. To see what credentials have been verified by a third-party service, please click on the "Verified" symbol in some Experts' profiles. JustAnswer is not intended or designed for EMERGENCY questions which should be directed immediately by telephone or in-person to qualified professionals.